The program focuses on Zingerman’s Community of Businesses and its philosophies and Customer Complaint Process. The businesses include the original business, Zingerman’s Delicatessen, plus Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Creamery, Catering, Mail Order, ZingTrain, Coffee Company, Roadhouse Restaurant, Candy Manufactory and the newest business—Events at Cornman Farms. Zingerman’s produces and sells all sorts of full flavored, traditional foods in its home of Ann Arbor, Michigan to the tune of $50,000,000 a year in annual sales. Effectively managing conflict has allowed Zingerman’s to grow from 2 employees to 700 over 33 years. Like Apple Computers, Zingerman’s delights its customers with its food and its customer relations. It has also been lauded by President Obama and others for its employee support, including its fair base salary, hours and benefits. Zingerman’s philosophy of Servant Leadership, Energy Management, Going Direct and Handling Customer Complaints is at the core of its popularity and success.

To learn more about Cyberweek and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) activities, visit ADRHub.com.

Social media and the Internet are transforming society, providing new benefits but also new hazards. Some have suggested that online communication and collaboration may lead to decreased civility, mutual understanding, and communicative clarity, as compared with face-to-face methods. Such negative trends can occur, but are they inevitable? We have been investigating whether online communication tools can actually support more skillful communication and deeper mutual understanding, especially in situations involving conflict, controversial topics, or differences in goals and perspectives.

What if online interactions could be designed to support more empathy, self-reflection, perspective taking, civility, and curiosity? Our preliminary research on new tools which support these abilities have found that they do foster better communication and conflict resolution skills in people engaged in online interactions. In this discussion we will explore these issues, giving some examples, and speak about tools for supporting positive conflict resolution skill use for social media and online communication.